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Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 00:27:13 -0500 (EST)
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Subject: Hollywood Awakenings
Awakenings
Published on Friday, December 9, 2005
by the Guardian
Hollywood may have been slow to reflect the post-
Katrina reality of America, but it's catching up
fast with films like Syriana and Homecoming
by John Patterson
<http://film.guardian.co.uk/patterson/story/0,,1662152,00.html>
For the past year the bald, ugly facts of the world we
now live in have finally begun bubbling out from under
the crust of officially sponsored bullshit that until
recently constituted reality for many Americans.
However, since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and
Hurricane Cindy Sheehan hit Crawford, Texas, Pandora's
box has been irrevocably opened, the bats and rats of
actuality pouring out of it on a daily basis:
unfathomable incompetence and corruption, a Veep
defending torture, Plamegate metastasizing hourly; a
360-degree cyclorama of corruption and deceit - and the
media can scarcely avoid showing it. It took a while
but, man, it's been worth the wait.
However, during the same period we've had to wait for
the movies to reflect this new dispensation.
Investigative reporters and bloggers can turn on a dime
in response to breaking events. Hollywood, by contrast,
has the turning circle of an oceangoing liner, and is
compromised by the sheer cost of its product. Still,
it's beginning to happen. All year, reality has been
languishing in the subtext of popular movies. George
Romero offered a mordant satire of the American economy
and class system, and even Spielberg mildly interrogated
the official version in War of the Worlds. Elsewhere,
movies like Jarhead and Good Night and Good Luck, and TV
shows like Over There and Sleeper Cell have expressed a
mild, sometimes historically displaced, yet oddly
apolitical dissidence.
But now comes Syriana, which directly confronts the ways
in which Big Oil has corrupted politics, purchased an
administration, and profoundly endangered us all.
Written by Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, it
mingles numerous strands of narrative to create an
awesome picture of evil, corruption and violence. Texas
oilmen dominate the political process; emirs who promise
the very Middle East democratic reform America claims to
be fighting for are murdered by unmanned CIA planes
because of their plans to offer cheap oil; honest CIA
agents like George Clooney's character are sidelined and
betrayed; federal regulators do just enough regulating
to appear honest; and Pakistani guestworkers in Middle
East oil refineries are exploited and drawn toward
terrorism. As one character says, "Corruption keeps us
safe and warm" - a perfect "greed is good"-style mantra
for the Bush era. Syriana is full of pleasurable
details, including some ticklesome character names:
Leland Janus, Mr Whiting, and Pope - gentlemen oil
barons, the latter residing on his "777 Ranch" stocked
with pronghorn antelope to satiate his hunting rifle.
Oil companies have names like Killen or - love this -
Gaia Oil Exploration.
Despite all of this, and because of its refusal to
simplify itself to death, Syriana may sometimes feel to
the apolitical viewer a little like homework. Not so Joe
Dante's Homecoming, a joyously scabrous, ranting mini-
movie for the Showtime cable network's Masters of Horror
series, in which dead Iraq veterans burst out of their
flag-draped coffins and start walking towards
Washington, where evil politicians and their grotesque
pundits are working for re-election. Turns out the
unkillable GI's merely wish to vote the bums who sent
them to war out of office. Once they vote, they expire.
Enjoying final cut and a nothing budget, Dante has
spilled his vituperation onto the screen unalloyed, and
the result is splendidly vicious and partisan. Its
caricatures of Karl Rove ("Kurt Rand") and fascistic
blonde bag-of-bones Ann Coulter ("Jan Cleaver") are
unapologetically coruscating, and the sight of a
uniformed zombie dashing Bush's Brain's brains out
proves deeply satisfying. Made up of errant bits of the
zeitgeist - cable news fascism, censored military
funerals, irate Iraq vets running for Congress - cobbled
together for maximum satirical impact, Homecoming comes
on like Roger Corman's Syriana. And as often happens
with Cormanesque ventures, the cheesy, no-budget entry
often kicks the well-funded studio equivalent's ass. Oh,
when we dead awaken, indeed ...
? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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